Canadian Humanitarian NGO & Canadian Lobster Fisherman involved In Water & Drip Irrigation Community Development in Mali, West Africa. Living Stories. Listening To Stories. Looking for Moments & Memories. Writes very poorly, and is oh so struggling to balance two very different lives.

All 100 Said, “To Hell With You Sahara Desert”

This was a great week. I told my development agency Man of Peace Development that I was going to double our food security impact this year.

In Mali, we normally undertake drought season drip irrigated gardening with about fifty new families each year on our four month term. This enables greater food security for about five hundred people. This is not even mentioning our water purification work.

Loaded for bear with drip irrigation garden kits. My friend also has a huge black duffle bag on the gas tank, and another behind his back.

This morning, I was both excited and sad at the same time, as we pulled out of Sikasso to set up the last ten families in drought season, drip irrigated vegetable gardening for the term.

We cannot possibly take on any more work. We have to seal up what we have running now, and that is sad for me. Just this week we had three more women’s groups in remote camps ask for our help, but I had to say no.

I was also excited because today was the awesome day we were to surpass doubling our goal.

Our 100th lady in the gardening program this four month term. She no longer needs a watering can.

Our 100th lady broke my heart today. I haven’t come so close to crying in a long time. She asked for our help two weeks ago and I said we would help.

I went and inspected her site today and was simply horrified at the struggle she is in for survival. Her family has to be incredibly needy, hungry- there’s no other reason for her to be doing what she has been attempting to do for several weeks now.

Here is the plot she is working on. It is fenced in, but the well is dry…. No water.

The tire is the top of the dry well.

This lady is hauling 20 liter bottles of water on her head from a well 300 meters away. She is killing herself. And some plants are doing ok, but her lettuce is wilting because she can’t keep pace with the huge volume of water that hand watering requires. She needs drip irrigation to reduce water usage by 80-90%.

Here she is with her head-carried water jugs, watering.

I walked into the barren and parched garden plot to see her over there in the corner trying to get a few tomatoes and some wilted lettuce growing.

She surprised me. As I got closer, I could see she was attempting new practices such as ground cover to help retain moisture.

J. R.R. TOLKIEN – PEACE IS NEVER FREE

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it."
J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

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Pictures

Photo is attributed as, “The Graves Of A Catholic Woman And Her Protestant Husband Seperated By A Wall, Holland, 1888.”

Bones placed in Animistic Religious Ritual

Jean Claude spreading already fermented coco out to dry.

My son Ted with me on a return trip to Ivory Coast in 2009. His first time back in Ivory coast since his childhood. Coffee drying.

Some of my coco growing friends. A happy reunion in 2009. Man I miss these guys.

90 km In the Bush.Doing Drought Season Drip Irrigated Gardens.

View From the Pier in Segou.

Farming tools have not changed for these people for 300 years.

Our orange lady, who passed away.

By the Baffond on Niaradougou. By the Potato fields.

Road to Bankagooma Land

Storage Granery for Millet to feed the family though 9 months of drought in Sahel.